


a triangle with two sides

by Imkerin



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-13
Updated: 2015-11-13
Packaged: 2018-05-01 11:55:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5204966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imkerin/pseuds/Imkerin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So maybe Mats' eyes aren't the first color Neven sees - but neither are anyone else's.</p><p>(follows Contra's <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/5203646">Fate's Most Faithful Rejects</a>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	a triangle with two sides

**Author's Note:**

> When I finished reading your fic this weird little sequely coda thing just kind of happened, I hope you don't mind!

The first thing Neven sees is blue.

It happens after the derby: they'd lost and he hadn't played well, he can admit it -- he's not usually that _angry_ on the pitch. Before the game, in training, he'd thought he was over the blackest parts of his jealousy, patched up the worst pits of the unfairness. He'd smiled - sort of - at Kevin's joke that he was Höwedes with a wig on, there to spy for the smurfs. Mats had smiled, too, a little. He'd thought he'd been ready.

But he'd gotten carded within five minutes for a too-hard tackle a second or two late, the single black line on the white strip of paper like yet another middle finger from the universe. He'd gotten a bollocking at halftime for that that he'd barely listened to, and that he'd managed to avoid getting sent off in the second half can only be attributed to the kind of luck and convenient referee blindness that's normally Bayern Munich's sole domain.

The scoreline weighs on him as they file back down the tunnel: 1-2 at home, Höwedes wins again, Subotic loses again. It should be easy to let go: he still has Mats on his team, in his life, in his bed -- but it isn't, and he can't. It just sits in his chest and festers until they're done and he's leaving, first out because he can't bear to stay a minute longer, and there, as early as him and waiting, just out of the mixed zone, where no cameras will spot him hanging about: Höwedes. Again.

"Waiting for your _partner_?" he says. The bitterness scratches his throat raw and he hates it, hates that he's capable of it, but that doesn't stop him from getting up in Höwedes' face, still fighting this battle that he's already lost a thousand times, that he loses every day that Mats wakes up closer to Gelsenkirchen than to him. It doesn't stop him shoving Höwedes up against the wall.

"Neven," Höwedes says. His voice is startled but his eyes have something that looks horribly like pity settling into them and Neven can't take it, not from him.

"Fuck you," he says, shoving him harder, pinning him there against the painted concrete and again, as if it will make any kind of difference at all: " _Fuck you._ " And then, because he wants everything Mats has with a hunger he can't explain, he kisses him, rough, their teeth mashing together and catching Neven's lip with a shock of pain that's lost in the next second by the horrible disorienting feeling of the world falling straight out from underneath his feet.

He stumbles back, gasping, and the blue stripes on the shoulders of Höwedes' white jacket sear into his mind. There's blood, bright, angry red, on the pink sweep of Höwedes' lip, and when he raises one hand up to touch his own mouth it's just as red on his fingers, trickling down his pale, tinted skin. He can't stop looking.

Höwedes says his name again, echoing somewhere in the distance; Neven tries to answer, but he can't get his voice to work. "Come on," Höwedes says, and then there's an arm around his shoulders that doesn't feel as unwelcome as it might have, as it _should_ have, and Höwedes is leading him down the hallway. He follows numbly. The walls are yellow -- he's known that for years -- but he'd never understood what that meant, how bright it is against the black, how much they stand out against the white-and-blue.

"But Mats," he says, eventually, when he doesn't feel like he's going to trip over his own feet in the next second and topple them both to the floor. The split in his lip pulls horribly on the _M_ of the name and sends another trickle of blood down his chin. He wipes it away again and smears his hand on his track pants, watching as the color disappears into the black fabric.

"I texted him," Höwedes says. “He’s coming.”

Neven looks up for the first time in -- he's really not sure how long. The pity's gone, if it was ever there, replaced with an uncannily familiar mixture of wariness-distrust-confusion-want, the same roil of emotions that’s finally smothered the coal of jealousy in his stomach. "You did," he says.

"Yeah," Höwedes says. "I thought--" he stops, shaking his head, and lets go of him, taking a step away to slump heavily against a wall. They're in a bathroom, Neven notices suddenly, with a certain amount of surreal amusement, and the echo on his voice is real now, bouncing off the empty tile and not just through Neven’s empty head. “I thought it would be a good idea, to talk to him, about this -- you did just…”

“See them,” Neven finishes for him. “Yeah.” He pauses, then adds “Sorry.” It’s only the right thing to do, after what he did, after what a shit he’s been all day, in fact, and it doesn’t feel as grudging as he thought it would.

“I don’t know how this happened,” Höwedes says. It’s almost a whisper, almost as if he’s talking to himself rather than Neven, and Neven thinks suddenly: _Mats didn’t tell him we never broke up._

He reaches out and touches Höwedes’ shoulder: gently, this time, not a caress but not a shove, either -- just a touch that could maybe, eventually, learn to be more. Right now it feels absurd and right at the same time, a sideways, colored shadow of what it’s like to hold Mats in the dark gray of his house at night. “Me neither,” he says, and half-smiles.


End file.
